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The Haunted Mansion
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Dreams
- Hits: 1737
It's the standard waiter's nightmare. I'm in the restaurant, serving table, they just keep coming in and in, I can't find the kitchen, get the orders quick enough, and eventually I give up and sit down to eat.
It's the restaurant where I work, only it's not, it's a large mansion, "The Haunted Mansion", that sits atop center street overlooking the bridge and the city and the restaurant is in the basement...
"G", my partner, he finds me sitting and eating and yells at me, it's 6:00 PM, I shouldn't be eating now and I'm fed up, fed up with this working and not ever being caught up and so I tell him to f#$Q%! himself and walk out.
I'm filled with regret almost as soon as I leave the restaurant. There's a big slide that goes down the hill from Center street, leaves the restaurant, and now I return to pick up my things, final cheque, the owner is there in the center of the restaurant, center of a marble floor in front of staircases that go both up and down, I've never been upstairs, he doesn't speak to me, he's mad, nor does Franco or G, they're all mad at me for leaving and I'm remorseful, this was not how I wanted it to end, and jobs nowadays are tough to find, this is going to be difficult...
I take the slide down from the restaurant, the last table is leaving, they're taking the slide as well, they're a nice family, rich, all our customers are. And I'm wondering how this is the last table, there were so many just a few moments ago when I was inside, I get off the slide at the bottom and looking under it, at the supports that hold it up, and there are giant fossil shark teeth embedded in the stone, and I'm annoyed at having discovered this treasure just after having left my job, and I'm sad as well, having taken the fun slide down the hill, that I'll never be able to take my daughter on it, we're not rich enough, her and I, and I can't afford to take her on it because I'm poor and I no longer work here....
I'm looking at the neighborhood, where the slide exits, trying to remember how to get here so I can sneak back in and steal some more of these shark's teeth....
**Note: this is an entirely explicable dream in terms of daily events, life at the restaurant, conversations with child, etc. Very straightforward.
Candlestick Rescue
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2118
It's the inadvertent collection of things I had no intent of ever collecting.
Antique brass candlesticks.
Sometimes they turn up at garage sales, the flea market, thrift shops, in the summer as often as a pair a week. And I buy them, usually because they're too cheap to leave, far cheaper than buying the new made-in-India rubbish that saturates the market now. I can't resist a bargain.
You learn to spot the real ones from the fakes. The fakes are heavier, lack the color, the patination, the distress and wear. Although there are some very competent fakes out there, most can be spotted without even lifting them and checking the bases. When you get them home you try and date them, compare the styles, look for a makers mark, most are unmarked and can only be dated generally by comparing styles to other candlesticks where you're certain of the period.
And there are the "orphans", the single candlesticks that have lost their partner sometime in the past 100, 200 years. I have a special affinity for these, pick them up for a dollar or two in the hopes of eventually reuniting them with their mates, rare but it's happened, I've found one at a garage sale and paired it, years later, with another from a distant garage sale. I think, romantically perhaps, of what they've been through in their years of separation and imagine, could they talk, of their conversations and joy at being reunited.
Awake at 5:00 AM
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2118
For some reason I'm awake at 5:00 AM, filled with a murderous rage.
No recollection of waking up, just the thought of strangling someone.
And I can't fall back asleep. So review my notes, drink a cup of coffee, open a few bills - today's a long one - longer on only half a night's sleep; but tomorrow - with luck - I can sleep in.
Starbucks - Jan 12
- Details
- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2106
I've been meaning to escape the restaurant between shifts for a while.
Today I managed to do so. A quick jaunt to the Starbucks down the street, furtively swipe another fistful of gift cards, then a seat on a barstool at the window. The tables and chairs are all full.
I've a lot of notes to go through. Ideas are plentiful, time is short...
There's an idiot beside me on his cellphone, talking loudly as though he were in a nightclub, I'm unable to concentrate. He's talking about the courses he's taking in University, about the Jane Austin novel he's being forced to read, what he thinks of it (not much apparently, too much detail; did she really need to mention things like 'color'), about what he's doing after Starbucks and I want to smack him for being such a boor..... And at a table next to me, a table I can't sit at because it's occupied, a fat woman with a pram is dictating from her Acer PC in a monotone:
"Love is enduring...love is always there when you need it...true love is unfathomable but ...."
Her friend is writing all this down. And I think that maybe fat chick is dictating some sort of break up letter to her friend but at the end her friend says with astonishment "You wrote this?" and fat chick confesses "yeah, it's a poem I wrote when..." and I'm going nuts in this carnival of idiocy....
Eventually they all shut up and I have a moment to gather my thoughts. Briefly, because I want to get back to the restaurant, have my nap on the sofa in the basement, listen to the mice nibbling on the furniture, then back to work....
But the thoughts, they'll wait, have to wait, because it's late and I've 3 doubles left and am pining for a nap...
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